What Is Death - Tyler Volk

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a “systematic study of phenomena such as telepathy.” “Never one to investigate a topic halfheartedly, Newcomb threw himself into the thick of research on paranormal events, poring over the literature and attempting to witness occurrences firsthand.” But after his investigations, which included “mediums and other masters of the paranormal” in various U.S. cities, he found nothing. In his presidential address he decried those willing to infer “new laws of mental action without being able to replicate the relevant phenomena.”32

Despite his dissenting view he was reelected and afterwards remained as a member of the governing council, trying to convince others that “psychical research was a scientific dead end.”

As I look across at those on the other side, those who infer new laws of mental action, here is one of my major problems. For all the accounts of pastlives, we are faced with a shocking lack of any hard-core, verifiable, replicable, scientific findings regarding such purported phenomena. This is not for want of trying. But the fact is that we have not progressed in bringing any scientific light to these phenomena. Society still has what it had a hundred years ago: throngs of believers with personal anecdotes.

Certainly science as a process is, in my opinion, the supreme example of being tentative, open to new findings. New discoveries are always being made. It would be futile hubris to state that science knows all. So some dualists would say that science hasn’t yet found the equivalent to Galileo’s telescope, able to provide verifiable new data about the realm of angels or the wavelengths of telepathy or vibrations upon which the dead continue without their bodies. Is the study of the afterlife waiting for its Galileo and telescope to open up new visions for all to behold?

There is a problem with this line of reasoning. We have a world in which countless numbers already claim to possess the psychic telescope, to

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have telepathy, clairvoyance, and the ability to communicate with the dead. Why have these phenomenal people not been brought into the forefront of science? All it would take would be one genuine psychic to put on those half ping-pong balls over both eyes, have another psychic in a remote and sealed room transmit pictures, then have the first psychic successfully receive them. Then let the pair travel the wide world performing in all the labs, under various degrees of rigor and experimental control, and have it be true, true, true. The headlines would trumpet the finding everywhere that television or printed word reaches. Because the psychics want to spread the message of their powers, including mind-to-mind transmission and contact with the dead, why don’t they just do it—prove it once and for all?

After Galileo turned the telescope on the heavens, anyone could build the device and see for himself or herself. So we have the following situation. Millions can do what no scientist can do in a laboratory experiment that others could duplicate, and which could pass the peer-review quality assurance so essential to scientific progress. It’s as if in the days of Galileo millions said they could put a glass to their eyes and see sunspots—but no scientist could. What a weird, split world that would be. Yet, with regard to telepathy and contact with the dead, that seems to be the world we have. How is this possible?

Believers in the afterlife and paranormal could say the fault is not with the replicability but with the science profession. They could say that scientists are stuck behind blinders put on them by their profession so that these phenomena won’t be investigated. Or perhaps positive scientific results about the paranormal are not being allowed into the top journals by the gatekeeping editors and reviewers of the science priesthood, who forbid any such knowledge to pass with their blessing just as the priests of old tried to suppress the nascent findings of telescope science. But in the reality of professional science that I

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know so well, scientists are hungry for big discoveries, champing at their laboratory bits to have a chance at the fame that would reverberate across the decades. And such is what would come from any simple, reproducible demonstration of disembodied intelligences, telepathy, or contact with the dead. Real evidence for any of these would win the Nobel Prize of Nobel Prizes. But from the vantage point of scientific investigation, there is nothing but failures, flawed experiments, botched statistics, and, as a fact of history, fakes.

The future of science is likely to help us reach consensus about whether the monist or dualist view is correct. Right now the monist view is supported by both the lack of laboratory evidence for a dualistic world and the lack of any explanation for how the dualist view could be true, given what is known about the brain.

To repeat, it is always important to remember that absence of proof is not proof of absence. Certainly modern physics has its share of odd phenomena and theories to allow for something more radical to emerge about the nature of mind than we can even yet imagine. Take, for example, the superstring theory of ten-dimensional objects of which six dimensions are hidden, giving us our three of space and one of time. Or consider the quantum-world finding of nonlocal interaction. But I’m not holding my breath. I’m going to follow the monist path and move along in developing a personal philosophy of how to live life in the presence of death as final extinction of myself. The question now is: Where will this path lead?

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hat does the monist view ultimately offer? A bunch of

Wneurons? That we are only equivalent to a cantaloupe’s volume of specially sensitized cells? However magical their trillions of firefly flashes of activity seem to be, however much their mysteries are being unraveled by science, however energized we may feel by imaging the electrical, chemical pulses among their networks, it all still feels like a desperate act to try and find meaning within them. Taking on the task of finding meaning in neurons can make one feel like the character in Edvard Munch’s famous painting of an anguished, despairing face. Do monists have anything to offer other than The Scream?

We must be careful not to equate the fact that we would not exist without the material brain with saying we are only the brain. We are an organizational property of the brain—and entire nervous system and more—a property of the whole system. In this way we, as mental human entities, are

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similar to the property we call “life” as it arises from the complex interactions of the parts of a cell. We experience some of the neural orchestration as our magnificent moment-to-moment existence: consciousness. It is in consciousness that we should seek for meaning in how the concept of death can enhance life.

How should we consider the thought of death in the context of what is known about consciousness? Is death a thought that pollutes? A dirty secret we should cover up? An idea we should smash like a false idol or run from like poison gas? Perhaps we should not make it the focus of consciousness because of its capability to produce fear.

This fear is not a fear of something concrete, like a singing Christmas tree or a rattlesnake. With them the danger either is or isn’t there, and so the fear comes and goes as a useful function of the brain, prompting us if necessary to perform in ways that avoid the danger. Instead, the thought of death can be there all the time. It’s the ultimate predator, with canines ready to bite and a maw ready to swallow us, if not now then someday. If dangerous and real sights and sounds can throw our amygdalas into overdrive, then what does the idea of death do? Could it make our amygdalas cringe in response at every moment?

Should we instead sublimate it into a variety of phobias and fear disorders that sometimes involve death, such as in panic attacks, where the victim feels as if he or she is dying? If the thought of death creates a life of dread and fear, is this the life we want? If not, then maybe we should keep death away from consciousness. Perhaps the only good thought of death is an unconscious thought, and thus, as far as we conscious beings are concerned, no thought at all. Of course, according to classic Freudian psychology, repressing the thought of death might be equally unwise. Because the unconscious is

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so powerful, the repressed thought would still be there in the deep mind, haunting us.

Many wisdom traditions around the world provide us with another option. They tell us to not repress death but to look at it, to make it conscious as a way toward personal growth and development. As the examples (from Montaigne, Jesus, Buddha, and shamanism) in the introduction show, the idea of death can create a more enriched life. We looked earlier at how Buddha left his life of ease, a move triggered in part by seeing a dead person. Now let’s hear Buddha at the end of his own life.

Nearly eighty years old, Buddha called his monks over to his deathbed for some last words. He first spoke about the continuance of his message not through his moribund body but through his teachings. He then gave his famous final lesson: “I now impress it upon you, decay is inherent in all composite things; work out your salvation with diligence!”33 We all are going to die—so keep this fact in mind and pay attention to your lives now.

Perhaps any benefit of making conscious the inevitability of death is like the benefit derived from proper composting of kitchen scraps. If kept compacted in a pile, the scraps begin to smell and can become toxic, as anaerobic bacteria colonies get to work. Instead, the scraps need to be aerated and tended mindfully, then they can be spread in the garden to provide nutrients for plants. Regarding mortality, tend it and turn it and eventually mix it into other parts of the unconscious so it can be spread throughout, possibly allowing powerful benefits of life to emerge. And more—keep the fact in mind, Buddha said, be conscious. That’s how nature built our brains to be used.

The thought of death can be imaged as a seed, which grows from being planted in the mind. But into what? We could offer a possibility by

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interpreting a famous parable of Jesus here. In this he referred, as he often did, to heaven’s imperial rule. No one can know for sure what Jesus meant. But the phrase can be taken to apply to the here and now. In other words, in my opinion, he was describing an advanced state of being in life. Heaven’s imperial rule, he said, is “like a mustard seed. It’s the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”34 This metaphor could apply to any emotionally laden ideas that help one grow in a beneficial way. It could apply to the concept of death: plant it in consciousness and it will help you as it spreads to become a haven for developing the way to live.

And yet—despite these metaphors and promised benefits, the earlier question remains. How can we be sure that it’s not fear that will grow from making the idea of death more conscious? It’s all very well to say the seed will grow, but what is the species of the plant? What if we achieve only thorns in the mind, not sheltering fronds?

For example, Eskimo shamans of a certain tradition, through physical and mental ordeals, hone the ability to see themselves as skeletons.35 This practice may seem terrifying. Yet we know that such people are revered within their societies as evolved beings, able to help others. What exactly is going on?

Surely the basic starting point is that we as metabolic beings will likely experience fear when contemplating death, because this idea is a biological threat, and we have evolved to become fearful and take evasive action against threats. That is probably why we so easily, naturally, repress thoughts of our mortality. Fear is a biological reality. Fear is natural in this case. If we as psychological beings face the challenge of meeting a concept of death that we sometimes call up inadvertently, feel tentatively, and often hide from, how much more challenging it would be to face a concept of death that we

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consciously emphasize and amplify! Now consider the way that biological threats of death from the environment helped organisms evolve as anti-death beings. Think about how the magnificent elk was honed by the presence of the wolf. Perhaps what the wisdom traditions point to is the psychological equivalent of this biological response to death threats from other organisms. This psychological parallel happens all in one brain. Within a brain the idea of death can bring forth not just fear but a response to fear. Is this response what the traditions view as the gain from contemplating death?

We have seen evidence that consciousness involves special parts or networks of the brain. It is a flickering dynamic core in which certain brain organs are crucially important. But what is the function of consciousness? If a function exists, does it help us understand what benefit could derive from contemplating death?

The function of consciousness is not easily figured. For instance, one might simply say the function is so we exist as selves. But such existence might be a result of consciousness, not its primary function. In the technical literature on consciousness one even hears some speculation that consciousness itself is what is called an epiphenomenon. Just as a lightbulb’s function is to produce light—with heat as a byproduct, its epiphenome- non—so the torrent of activity in the cognitive unconscious from moment to moment might throw off consciousness.

But most neurobiologists believe that consciousness does have a function. Something so important would not have come about in evolution were it not vital to the whole brain and our biological beings.

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One cognitive scientist who has made a case for the function of consciousness is Bernard Baars, who elucidated various key parts of the brain that produce it. He likens consciousness to a spotlight on a theater stage. Players enter the spotlight, then disappear as new players come in. Where do the players who are so integrated in the spotlight come from? The sights, sounds, thoughts, imagery, and more enter the spotlight from the offstage darkness, from the unconscious. Several players can perform together in the spotlight, which is the synchronization of parts of consciousness, such as sights and sounds. If the spotlight is too empty, it is common for more players to shove their way in. (Or perhaps they are pushed by the stagehands of unconscious emotions and urges whose actual hands can be glimpsed sticking into the spotlight as they shove the players in.)

What happens to the activities of the players in the spotlight of consciousness? Do their words and actions just vanish with no effects? Taken alone, the spotlight is a passive metaphor. It is a metaphoric field of light, perhaps cast by the thalamic intralaminar nuclei (the light is not in these nuclei, but is created by them via their connections to the rest of the brain) and existing as Edelman and Tononi’s flickering dynamic core. But even if we think of the spotlight not as a site but as a dynamic geometry from the physiology of the brain, it all still seems so passive—too passive. What happens to the actions of the events in consciousness?

Baars says that the spotlight possesses an active function with a profound biological purpose. And here we come to the feature that will be key in a suggestion about how to think about death in relation to the self. In a nutshell, Baars says, consciousness “is the publicity organ in the society of

mind.”36

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Consciousness as a spotlight, a lit-up gathering of players, allows a vast audience to all witness the same material. More specifically, consciousness as a spotlight “serves to disseminate a small amount of information to a vast audience in the brain.”

What audience? Why, the audience sitting there in the dark, in other words, in the unconscious. The audience consists of many parts of the unconscious that we never see, such as memory systems, a variety of interpreters, processors of automatic behaviors, and motivational complexes. Furthermore, it is obvious that members of the audience are not passive. Because the brain’s circuits are cycles, it seems apparent to me that some members of the audience can run backstage to talk to the various directors, assistant directors, set designers, electricians, and stagehands, and thereby influence these offstage determiners of which players should leave the spotlight and which players should enter, and the player’s relationships and contexts when they are on stage.

I find a similar view in the ideas about consciousness from Edelman and Tononi: “When we become aware of something, whether it is an uneasiness in how we balance ourselves as we walk, a flutter in our stomach, a mistake in our reasoning, or the slow emergence of the pattern of an object out of a random-dot stereogram, we can make use of that information in a large number of possible ways that can trigger all kinds of behavioral responses. It is as if, suddenly, many different parts of our brain were privy to information that was previously confined to some specialized subsystem.”37 Via consciousness, information in some specialized subsystem (one of the players) moves onstage into the spotlight of the dynamic core and then becomes available to many different parts of the brain, in other words, to the audience who all witness what is in the spotlight.